How to Write Brilliant Lyrics (using your brain’s utter weirdness)

Lyrics that come out clunky or clichéd can find new life through one of Keppie’s favourite exercises, which uses the brain’s natural knack for connecting unrelated things.

A quick warm-up

Every brain makes connections at speed. Say “anxiety is like an octopus” and your mind instantly finds reasons it could be true, often several. The warm-up puts that to work for 60 seconds, a bit like stretching before a workout. Pair two seemingly random nouns, such as “sunset is a shark”, and list as many ways as you can that the connection might be true. You can repeat it a few times to get the muscles moving.

Two lists that collide

Next comes something closer to lyric writing. One list gathers words, images and phrases about something you genuinely want to write about. For Keppie, it’s one of her kids, on the edge of becoming a teenager. A second list explores a concrete image with no obvious link, picked at random (she lands on a bear). Then you spend a few minutes combining lines from each list without worrying whether they make sense. Importantly, the aim isn’t perfection. It’s to break habitual patterns about which words belong together, and to write abundantly, trusting a few nuggets of gold will turn up.

Shaping a lyric and refreshing cliché

Finally, you choose the lines you like and shape them with rhyme and structure into a lyric. Keppie’s draft pairs a child’s hand with honey, and sweetness with tooth and claw. The same approach can revive a tired cliché like “love is an ocean” by exploring the connection beyond the surface. Phoebe Bridgers does something similar in “Moon Song”, holding a person and a feeling alongside the image of being in water and letting one describe the other. It’s powerful writing, and with practice, well within reach.